Crown

How to spell crown

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crown

What does crown mean?

1. nounAn ornamental circlet, usually of precious metal, worn by a monarch as a symbol of sovereign power.
2. nounAn artificial cap fitted over a damaged or decayed tooth to restore its shape and strength.
3. verbTo formally invest a person with royal authority by placing a crown on their head, or to mark the high point of something.

Crown in a sentence

• noun

  The jewelled crown was kept under guard in the tower.

• noun

  The dentist fitted a porcelain crown over the cracked molar.

• verb

  The bishops would crown the young king at the abbey.

• noun

  At the coronation the archbishop placed the crown on her head.

• noun

  My old filling was replaced with a permanent crown last week.

• verb

  A spectacular firework display would crown the evening's celebrations.

Where does crown come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Crown traces back to the Latin corona, which literally meant a 'garland' or 'wreath', the circle of leaves or flowers placed on the head of a victor or honoured person. The Latin word passed into Old French as 'corone' or 'coroune', and English borrowed it in the early 1200s, soon smoothing it down to the familiar single-syllable 'crown'. Because the headpiece sat at the very top, the word naturally spread to mean the top of anything: the crown of a hill, the crown of the head, even the visible top of a tooth. The original Latin corona still survives unchanged in scientific English, where it names the glowing ring around the sun, and the same root gives us 'coronation' and 'coroner'. The 'ow' spelling reflects the way the French vowel was pronounced and then anglicised, which is why the word looks nothing like its tidy Latin ancestor.

How the word is built

• crown (single root from Latin corona: garland, wreath); no prefix or suffix